Similarities Between Early 20th and 21st Century

Both the late nineteenth and the early twenty-first centuries saw technological change, increased globalization, economic growth, concentration of wealth, and rising inequality. Karl Marx described the way steam, railroads, and the telegraph had shrunk the world as the annihilation of space by time; in recent decades, the information revolution and digital technology have shrunk the world still further, producing similar vertigo.

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Both eras, moreover, saw increased immigration, changing demography, and a decline in standing for less-educated rural whites. And both saw rising populism, racism, xenophobia, and anti-Chinese sentiment. In both periods, a conservative Supreme Court opposed government intervention and reinforced the power of the privileged while ?constitutional structures impeded reform. Both witnessed the growth of an increasingly raucous ?public sphere, first in the nation’s streets and now on its information superhighways. And both featured national alarms over substance abuse and terrorism (alcohol and anarchism in the nineteenth century, opioids and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in the twenty-first).?

A country, facing deindustrialization and the emergence of the gig economy, is retreating into ignorance, culture wars, and performative outrage. Both parties seek to restrict free expression and narrow the boundaries of acceptable discourse, while Republicans also seek to dismantle social protections, shrink the administrative state, and replace a professional civil service with old-fashioned partisan patronage. None of that bodes well for quick resolution of the country’s major problems.?

One clear lesson learned is that free markets produce vast wealth but distribute their benefits irregularly and unevenly while causing constant social destabilization. The only way capitalism and democracy can peacefully coexist, therefore, is for policymakers in each new era to find ways to sustain economic growth while ensuring society as a whole shares in the benefits.?

In the end external or structural forces can present problems for the country, but citizens choose how to respond. As the Wisconsin Progressive Robert La Follette insisted, “America is not made. It is in the making.” In the end, therefore, the question is not what kind of country we are. It is what kind of country we want to be.?

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